Originally Posted By: justanoldmuso
RE RULES OF ENGAGEMENT OF BIAB AS A PLUG IN USED IN A HOST DAW.

due to a thread on here i was recently involved in where i was trying to help a user new to biab and other threads in the past ive seen on use of the biab plug in a host daw
(eg cake/tools/reaper/cubase/mixcraft/studio 1 and other daws etc etc.) ..

i would like to know /have clarified the rules of engagement of loading up the biab plug in, in a host daw.
because as an ex-tech i'm kinda confused myself on this subject so i'm sure some new users will be also.

i feel some CLARITY is needed on this subject as follows...
1. in the host daw are there any bit depth and or sampling rates that might mean a crash/problem could occur useing bb plug in ?
and in the host daw are there any other factors that could cause a crash situatio eg some daws like reaper allow recording to flac and other formats.
in addition should a daw always be set to asio drivers ? reason i ask is i notice one pg vid shows daw set to waveout.
IN SUMMARY WHAT SETTINGS IN A HOST DAW COULD PRECIPITATE
THE BB PLUG IN NOT WORKING OR A CRASH SITUATION ?
WHAT SHOULD THE HOST DAW BE SET TO ?
DOES IT MATTER ?
2 the users external (eg usb) sound device.
modern sound devices are useing asio and are controlled by a IN SOFTWARE ON SCREEN USER CONTROL PANEL OFTEN.
with various settings like bit depth/sampling rate/buffer and other settings possibly.
once again i ask....
WHAT SETTINGS IN A MODERN SOUND DEVICE USER CONTROL PANEL COULD PRECIPITATE THE BB PLUG IN NOT WORKING OR A CRASH SITUATION ?
WHAT SHOULD THE CONTROL PANEL BE SET TO ?
DOES IT MATTER ?
3. in pg's software products themselves (eg biab or realband )i ask.....
WHAT SETTINGS IN PREFERENCES COULD PRECIPITATE BIAB
NOT WORKING OR A CRASH SITUATION ?
4. and in windows itself in its sound device settings ....
ARE THERE ANY SETTINGS THAT COULD PRECIPITATE BIAB NOT WORKING OR A CRASH SITUATION ?.
5. finally are there any other situations/settings that i havent mentioned where the end user of a pg product might come across a problem or a crash situation ?

the reason i'm asking for clarity regarding the above is every year there are many new user posts through the year relating to settings issues often. and user problems.
i DO realise this is not unique to pg ; and one can see same issues being raised on various recording and gear manufacturer forums. i also realise its a complex subject. thus how about pg make some vids to show the best settings approaches ?
in closing as an example of one issue ...as biab likes 44.1/16...
IS IT SAFEST TO SET EVERYTHING AT 44.1/16 ?
ie the asio external (eg usb) sound device and the host daw and windows ?
i really believe CLARITY is needed regarding this subject.

best and thanks in advance.
oldmuso



1: The BIAB plugin can work at any standard sample rate from 44.1khz to 192khz at 16-24 bit (at least from my testing, since my Focusrite supports 44.1khz, 48khz, 88.2khz, 96khz, 176.4khz, and 192khz at 16 and 24-bit, and yes I've personally tried all those settings). Not all devices capable of higher sample rates will work at those sample rates in BIAB or RB, usually due to driver issues. Driver type selected in the DAW will vary from one computer to the next as not all computers will work the same.

2: Those settings exist because not all computers are the same - if they were all the same, we wouldn't have options. If you've ever used a Mac with BIAB, you would know that our audio settings in the Mac version have way fewer settings - this is because there are only a handful of computer types for Mac where there are hundreds of thousands for Windows.

Sample rate and bit depth aside (as mentioned in #1), buffer size is entirely dependent on the computer and software. One will work fine at 32 samples, another one will require 2048. Other plugins in your DAW can and will affect this too. You'll have to explore these settings to find out what works with your computer as we cannot predict how hardware and software we don't own will perform.

3: Within Band-in-a-Box, RealBand, PowerTracks, etc, we do not have any settings that cause crashes in and of themselves, otherwise we would not have those options.

4: That is another situation we can't control, as Microsoft can at any moment make a change or update that causes something to stop working. This is unfortunately how computers work.

5: There are definitely situations that can lead to crashes, but we cannot predict them without experiencing them ourselves - at which point, we would figure out how to avoid that crash and adjust the program code accordingly.

It is "safest" to set everything to 44.1/16 or 44.1/24 (bit depth doesn't really matter) and this is often a troubleshooting step we take. Otherwise there is no clear answer to these question, as it is entirely dependent on audio and computer hardware and drivers.

I work here